


Stealing Hearts And Other Shiny Things

by DesertStorm



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Abandoned Fic, Angst, Ferrets, Humor, Looms (Doctor Who), M/M, So does the Master, The Doctor has a pet ferret, These facts are not entirely unrelated, tagging this abandoned but also marking it complete because it works just fine as a one-shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 05:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4948786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertStorm/pseuds/DesertStorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They couldn't possibly pull this off. There was too much history between them. The Master was a murderous psychopath with a debilitating mental disorder. The Doctor was a sanctimonious idiot with an infuriating savior complex and too much hair gel. Their only mutual(ish) friend was a sentient timeship with too much Time on her hands and an annoying proclivity for speaking in code. The Master was (technically) a prisoner of war, and the Doctor had (technically) murdered their entire species. They could <i>not</i> be expected to cohabitate.</p><p>(or, The Doctor And The Master Finally Get Their Shit Together)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stealing Hearts And Other Shiny Things

The Master didn’t regenerate, of course.

He didn’t have to. A lead bullet to the gut may have been debilitating to some species, but Time Lords were biologically superior to every primarily corporeal species in the universe, and could shrug off a single bullet the way a Fghrtplghff could shrug off a disemboweling – a few hours in a healing coma and he was fine.. Even humans could survive bullet wounds most of the time; really, the Doctor had no idea what Mrs. Saxon had been thinking. Perhaps the Master had told Lucy a list of false weaknesses, in case of betrayal. Perhaps (the Doctor thought with horror) the Master had mentioned that time the Doctor had regenerated in San Francisco. Perhaps Lucy had forgotten that her husband had different biology.

At any rate, it didn’t matter. The Master was alive and well. The Doctor reveled in being near another one of his kind again – one solitary Time Lord, what would’ve been a tiny blip on his species sense before the war, and yet it felt like everything. He had gotten used to hearing the screaming empty silence of the void at all hours of the day, but as soon as the Professor opened his fob-watch he remembered everything he had been missing. And despite feeling the pain and anguish of the entire human race though Archangel, it had been practically bliss during that Year to feel the fact that the Master was alive. He threw himself into the Network to distract from that miserable pleasure, but he couldn’t help feeling guilty about his species sense at the back of his mind.

Except the Master’s work had been undone, and the planet Earth was back to normal, and the Doctor had no reason to disregard it anymore. The feeling of another Time Lord existing in the universe, after so long of being alone…

They were floating in the vortex now. The Doctor was sitting in the library, waiting idly for the Master to stop beating against the door of his room. It was understandable that he would be somewhat irate about being locked into a room alone, but he had to calm down eventually. The Doctor turned the page of his Time Travel Monthly periodical, attempting to block out the banging sound coming from down the hallway.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

_Visit the beautiful planet Barcelona in 5170! With beaches of white glass and stunning yellow vegetation, this vacation spot is sure to –_

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

The centerfold was an advertisement for a Time Agency enlistment agency fair in 3065, framed by two gorgeous models wearing nothing but bikinis and vortex manipulators. By 51st century standards, it was practically prude; the dialect of Mandarin used in the advertisement didn’t even have any filthy double meanings. (The Doctor didn’t notice the subliminal message urging all beings of over 140 galactic standard IQ to take a trip on the Gloriana on a certain day in 8932. This may have been because he was already under the influence of a subliminal message telling him to take a trip on the Orient Express; it may have been because he didn’t actually know his galactic standard IQ.)

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. 

“Alright! Fine!” the Doctor yelled, throwing down the magazine. He stalked out of the library and down the corridor. “What do you want?”

“To be let out of here,” the Master called back. 

The Doctor crossed his arms and glared at the Master’s door. “Not until you’re reasonable.”

The Master made a high, indignant, angry sound. “It’s hard to be reasonable when the person I’m negotiating with is an idiot.”

“I can help you with the drums. I can heal your mind, if only you would just let me!”

Behind the door, the Master sighed, hitting his forehead against the door. “You should be thankful that it’s a fairly good day for the drums. Tomorrow all you’ll be able to get out of me is senseless violence and nonsensical rants about the state of the universe.” A shuffling noise. “Nevertheless, I will not let you rummage around in my head. You’re more likely to break something than fix it.”

“Well, if you’re going to be like that…” The Doctor took out his sonic and fiddled with the setting for a few moments. Raising it, he started at the top left corner of the doorway, running the tip along the edge to form a solid seal.

“What are you doing?” the Master asked. The Doctor could detect a hint of panic in his tone. 

The Doctor flicked off the sonic. “Don’t bother trying to break the seal. You won’t be able to. I’ll just leave you here until you have another ‘fairly good day’.”

“Doctor!” the Master yelled, pounding on the door. “Don’t you dare!”

“Bye,” the Doctor called over his shoulder. “Don’t kill or destroy anything while I’m gone. I mean it!” He walked back to the library. He wanted to take another look at that centerfold…

\---

_A few hours later_

A pack of ferrets raced down the TARDIS corridor, scampering along the floor like a sentient flesh-eating carpet from Selg III. Not that this particular mass of living fur ate flesh, or (for that matter) was strictly sentient – or at least so the Doctor hoped. He blinked in the manner of a man who has just witnessed thirty-seven members of the Mustelidae family running down the hallway of his timeship, and sat up slowly, setting aside his book.

As he stood up, another pack of ferrets scurried past in the other direction. Now that he was closer, he could hear them squeaking as they ran. Not a hologram, then; the TARDIS had lost her sound projection system a while back, during an incident with a Korven and a pteranodon. The Doctor had been meaning to get around to fixing it, but then the Master had happened and his TARDIS maintenance problems had been bigger than a broken speaker system.

Yet another group ran by. The Doctor stepped out of the library and knelt down to scoop one up as they passed, lifting it for inspection.

“Well, aren’t you an inexplicable little thing,” he murmured, determining that it was definitely a real, living, non-illusory ferret. She wound herself around his arm, squeaking softly in distress. The Doctor sighed, standing up. There was only one logical explanation for this – well, no, there wasn’t actually a logical explanation at all, as he still hadn’t managed to think of any possible way that this could have been pulled off. But there was only one logical perpetrator, and he assumed that everything would fall into place once he found out whatever the Master had been doing. 

“Master!” he called, not really expecting an answer. He reached out through the TARDIS’ telepathic circuitry. 

_[{sentient}YOURS] = = [(make){LIFE}] from {NOTLIFE}!!! [{bemusement}{worry}{curiosity}]_

He patted the wall with the hand that wasn’t holding the ferret. “S’ alright,” he comforted. “They aren’t dangerous. Hang on, sorry, did you just say that he was cloning ferrets from the dead?”

_[{sentient}YOURS] = = {room} of [{place}MINE] & & [(find){loom(broken)}] & & [(use){NOTLIFE}] to [(make){LIFE}]_

“Where – where did he even find a dead ferret? Why would you keep a dead ferret? Where would you keep a dead ferret?”

_{NOTLIFE(every)} = = in {room} of [{place}MINE]_

“You… have a room where you collect dead things. Of course you do.” He sighed, in fondness and exasperation. “Why don’t you tell me about these things until after they become problems? Last time you decided to start a collection, my sixth self sulked for weeks and tried to fix your chameleon circuit-”

_{indignant}[{NOTLIFE}MINE] & & [{NOTLIFE(fish)}MINE]& & [{rectangularprism(blue)}MINE]_

“Yes, okay, calm down, it’s yours, the dead things are yours, the fishing supplies are yours, your chameleon circuit is yours. But where, exactly, is the dead-things room?”

_{rooms} of [{place}MINE] {NOTMOVE}_

“…yeah, but I don’t know where the room is.”

_{irritated} (where) [{room}{NOTLIFE(fish)}]_

“Next to the fishing-supplies room. Got it. Thanks.” He patted the wall again, just in case she was in a bad mood, and set off for the seven-hundredth corridor in the north-west-west wing of the cargo bay.

He turned the last corner just in time to see the Master release another ferret into the wild of the TARDIS corridors. He tried to step back behind the corner before the Master could look up, but the recently-born animal ran straight for him and clambered up his leg. The ferret he had picked up back at the library peered down from her spot around his shoulders and made a soft clucking noise at her sibling.

“Ooh, they like you,” the Master said. “It’s because you look so much like a weasel. They think that you’re one of them.”

“How did you even get out here?” The Doctor demanded. “It was isomorphic!”

“They’re on your head. Like a weasel crown. They must think that you’re their king.” The ferrets had indeed climbed onto the Doctor’s head. The Doctor didn’t worry too much; he had strong roots, and he had been thinking of trying a messier look anyway.

“The TARDIS told me that you’ve been looming them. I didn’t want to believe her, but here you are, apparently, looming ferrets. Is this because I told you not to kill things? You decided to become a parent instead? To ferrets?”

“The Weasel King,” the Master continued, ignoring him. “King of all Weaselkind. In charge of all the weasels of the world. Weasel head honcho.”

“They’re ferrets, not weasels,” the Doctor said, feeling increasingly annoyed.

“They’re writing weasel ballads about you right now. ‘Oh, Doctor, our glo-ri-ous king, ex-pert of weaseling out of ev-ery-thing…’”

“That’s not even a good rhyme scheme!”

“He’s such a weasel, you’ve never seen more, he’s slept with so many women –“

In a sudden fit of pique, the Doctor shoved one of his ferrets into the Master’s face. The ferret, faced with sudden movement and a large, fleshy expanse in front of her, extended her claws and dug in. The Master howled and ripped the ferret off, throwing her to the ground.

The Doctor rushed to pick her up and cradled her to his chest, glaring at the Master. “Don’t do that. You might have broken her.”

The Master stared at him with incredulity. “You were the one that shoved it into my face! It bit me!”

“Yes, that tends to happen when an animal is mad at you.”

“Is that supposed to be a metaphor? Are you going to bite me if I disobey you, now?”

“Only if you’d like,” the Doctor said, almost against his will.

There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence. Then:

“Sorry. I think spending a year with Jack Harkness as my only sane interaction with another sentient being rubbed off on me.”

The Master raised an eyebrow. “You think?”

There were a few more moments of uncomfortable silence. 

“How did you even get a loom, anyway?” the Doctor asked, in a desperate bid to regain his dignity. “I never owned one.”

“It wasn’t a whole loom,” the Master said. “Just a maternal genetic extrapolator that someone had hooked up to a progenation machine. It was stamped with the Cerulean coat of arms.” He paused, as if waiting for the Doctor to explain this atrocity.

The Doctor blinked at him. “I honestly have no idea how this stuff gets in here. If anything, it’s probably a souvenir from the Time Lord who had her before me. Though I don’t know why a Cerulean would want a TARDIS.”

“To look at plants,” the Master said. “Haven’t you ever met a Cerulean? All they ever do is look at plants.”

They both winced as they realized that the Master had used the present tense.

“So,” the Doctor said brightly, changing the subject. “If you go back to your room now, I won’t have to chain you to the wall.”

The Master considered this. “Hmmm... the run of your TARDIS versus locked in a cell for the rest of my life. Whichever shall I choose.”

“It’s this or helping me corral your ferrets.”

The Master sighed dramatically. “Fine.” Before the Doctor could do anything, he stepped back into the doorway, pulling aside a metal grate that had apparently been holding back the rest of the ferret clones. They tumbled out of the room in a deluge.

“Going back to my room now,” the Master said, in a pitch-perfect imitation of the Doctor’s voice. “Have fun corralling my ferrets!” He strolled off, apparently unconcerned with the flood of small animals that he had just unleashed. The Doctor, standing in the middle of a surge of ferrets, was helpless to watch him go.

\---

Approximately 39 hours later, the Doctor broke the isomorphic seal on the Master’s door and staggered in. His arms were covered in tiny red ferret claw marks; his face had a large, bloody gash down the right side. The remains of his trousers were soaked through with blood from the wounds left by some of the larger and more vicious ferrets. The Master looked from his position on the bed, then turned his gaze back up to the ceiling.

“You actually went back to your room,” the Doctor said, incredulous. “You went back to your room and actually stayed here.”

The Master clicked his tongue. “Tricky of you, to have the seal set to lock automatically whenever I’m in the room,” he said. “I didn’t feel like going through the trouble of breaking out again. Tell me, what is the point of keeping me in here? Do you intend to keep me on life support forever? Forget about me and leave me in here to wither? Because despite your insistence on “fixing” me, all you’ve done so far is prohibit me from destroying anything and avoid interacting with me.”

“Not true!” The Doctor protested weakly. “I’m here now. Interacting with you.”

“Only because you feel guilty about the weasel-to-the-face earlier.”

The Master knew him too well. “Well, partly. But I also wanted to, um, ask again. About fixing the drums. Are you absolutely sure – “

“Yes.”

“Really? You acknowledge the fact that it’s a problem, but you don’t want it fixed? That’s not like you.” The Doctor tried to step forwards, but stumbled as his knee gave out, ruining the effect somewhat. He’d have to take a look at that later in the infirmary; ferret-wrangling was surprisingly hazardous for a job that involved working with small, furry animals.

“I’d rather live with the drums than let you poke around at the workings of my subconscious. You failed our inner mental structure class four times.”

“I passed, though.”

“By half a point.”

“Touché. But anyway, I’ve gotten a lot better at it since then! C’mon, just give me a chance? Promise I won’t touch anything sensitive.”

The Master sat up suddenly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “Do you really think,” he said, standing up, “that I do not want these drums gone? I prefer myself sane, thank you very much.” He stalked towards the Doctor, glaring. “But now that you have so conveniently killed off the rest of our species, my mind is now the most powerful mind in the universe, and I would rather live with this maddening noise for the rest of my lives than let you into my mind and be left a drooling husk of my former selves.” They were face to face now. The Doctor, exhausted and suffering from blood loss and hit with the sudden realization that the Master was between him and the door, pressed his back against the wall, pupils dilated involuntarily.

The Master took a step closer. The Doctor stared into the Master’s dark eyes, feeling his warm breath on his face. There was a long moment of frozen silence, the air charged with the enmity of centuries. The Doctor finally forced himself to wrench his gaze away, twisting his head to the side, pressing his cheek against the wall. Taking the Master on board the TARDIS had been a bad idea; perhaps, back in the old days, without so many of the years between them, they might have been able to make this work. Hell, the Master had offered this, back during the Doctor’s third life. A half-share in the universe, living and ruling side-by-side, kiss and make up and be happy – but now? No, he had no illusions of the possibility that the Master would want him. In these times, in these lives - the Master was probably willing to kill him. But, he thought, perhaps not over a matter as trivial as this.

He stepped sideways out of the Master’s shadow, ducking neatly under the Master’s immediate reach, clearing his throat to break the tension. The Master, caught off guard, stepped back.

“Well,” the Doctor said with false cheer, “if you distrust my psychic skills that much, maybe not. Brain scan?”

The Master stared, caught off guard. “Wh-” He broke off and shook his head. “No! No brain scans!”

“Oh, come on. I do love a good brain scan. Also, I need to get to the infirmary in the next few minutes,” he rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment, “I think I might’ve torn a collateral ligament, either that or one of your ferrets bit through it, and I’ve been ignoring the pain for a while now because I had to find all of them before one of them chewed through an important cable somewhere but now I think it might be completely torn through and I’ll probably need help walking to the infirmary, and it’s as good a chance as any for you to come down and get checked over, and also I’ve been bleeding out for about thirty hours and I haven’t had any time to do anything more than wrap a bit of cloth around the wound and did I mention that I love a good brain scan?” He made a wide gesture with his hands to encompass the loveliness of brain scans. “The inner workings of the mind! All of those electrical signals jumping around, forming a living consciousness–“

“Doctor,” the Master interrupted, looking amused and possibly a bit fond, if the Doctor did say so himself. That’s certainly a quick mood swing from Dark and Murderous a few moments ago, the Doctor thought, and then the Master was taking his arm and slinging it around his neck. It didn’t work that well, because the Master was a few inches shorter than him, and the Master kept shifting and grumbling about how tall he was, Rassilon, couldn’t he have the common decency to regenerate a bit shorter than him for once? But they managed to get down to the -90th floor without the Master dropping him or the Doctor leaning on him too much, so it worked fairly well. 

To be honest, the pain wasn’t so bad that he really needed that much help to walk; he could have sufficed with a hand on the wall. He had chased small, fast-moving animals through winding corridors for more than a day on that leg, after all (he wondered when he had started thinking in Earth days instead of Gallifreyan spans). The “help walking” thing was mostly a sudden stroke of genius on the Doctor’s part to get the Master down to the infirmary without more blatant cajoling. The Doctor made a mental note to congratulate himself on his brilliant ploy later. After he fixed what was wrong with the Master, of course.

(The Doctor had a bad habit this life around of ignoring harsh truths, especially when they pertained to people he cared about. This particular truth was one that he would have to remember eventually, but it still wasn’t anything he wanted to face up to.)

The Master let go of him as they stepped into the infirmary, abandoning the Doctor to flail and catch himself on the doorframe. 

The Doctor glared. “What was that for?”

The Master shrugged. “You’re annoying and I saw straight through your ploy the moment you thought of it. Also, I’m not letting you scan my brain.” With that, the Master turned on his heel and strode away, leaving the Doctor to drag himself over to the tissue regenerator. It wasn’t really that the Doctor couldn’t just stand up and walk over, but he wanted to keep up appearances just in case the Master decided to come back.

The Doctor scowled as he waited for the regenerator to fire up. He hated it when people forced him to pay attention to harsh truths.

**Author's Note:**

> So I posted this a while back as the first chapter of a multi-chapter fic, and eventually found myself with no motivation to continue writing, uh, pretty much anything for the next year or so. For now, I'm marking it complete, because I think it works pretty damn well as a one-shot. Sorry to everyone who was looking forward to an update, but I just don't have much motivation for this fandom, and haven't had any for a while. Lately, I've been watching the episodes with Bill and liking Doctor Who again, so who knows? One day, I might come back and give these guys and their ferrets some closure.


End file.
